FROM the hour when the Puritan baby opened his eyes
in bleak New England he had a Spartan struggle for life. In summer-time he
fared comparatively well, but in winter the ill-heated houses of the colonists
gave to him a most chilling and benumbing welcome. Within the great open
fireplace, when fairly scorched in the face by the glowing flames of the
roaring wood fire, he might be bathed and dressed, and he might be cuddled and
nursed in warmth and comfort; but all his baby hours could not be spent in the
Ingleside, and were he carried four feet away from the chimney on a raw
winter's day he found in his new home a temperature that would make a modern
infant scream with indignant discomfort or lie stupefied with cold.

Nor was he permitted even in the first dismal days of
his life to stay peacefully within-doors. On the Sunday following his birth he
was carried to the meeting-house to be baptized. When we consider the chill and
gloom of those unheated, freezing churches, growing colder and damper and
deadlier with every wintry blast—we wonder that grown persons even could bear
the exposure. Still more do we marvel that tender babes ever lived through
their cruel winter christenings when it is recorded that the ice had to be
broken in the christening bowl. In villages and towns where the houses were all
clustered around the meeting-house the baby Puritans did not have to be carried
far to be baptized; but in country parishes, where the dwelling-houses were
widely scattered, it might be truthfully recorded of many a chrisom-child:
"Died of being baptized." One cruel parson believed in and practised
infant immersion, fairly a Puritan torture, until his own child nearly lost its
life thereby.

Dressed in fine linen and wrapped in a hand-woven
christening blanket — a "bearing-cloth" — the unfortunate young
Puritan was carried to church in the arms of the midwife, who was a person of
vast importance and dignity as well as of service in early colonial days, when
families of from fifteen to twenty children were quite the common quota. At the
altar the baby was placed in his proud father's arms, and received his first
cold and disheartening reception into the Puritan Church. In the pages of Judge
Samuel Sewall's diary, to which alone we can turn for any definite or extended
contemporary picture of colonial life in Puritan New England, as for knowledge
of England of that date we turn to the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, we find
abundant proof that inclemency of weather was little heeded when religious
customs and duties were in question. On January 22d, 1694, Judge Sewall thus
records:

"A very extraordinary Storm by reason of the
falling and driving of the Snow. Few women could get to Meeting. A child named
Alexander was baptized in the afternoon."

He does not record Alexander's death in sequence. He
writes thus of the baptism of a four days' old child of his own on February
6th, 1656:

"Between 3 & 4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptizeth my
Son whom I named Stephen. Day was louring after the storm but not freezing.
Child shrank at the water but Cry'd not. His brother Sam shew'd the Midwife who
carried him the way to the Pew. I held him up."

And still again on April 8th, 1677, of another of his
children when but six days old:

"Sabbath day, rainy and stormy in the morning
but in the afternoon fair and sunshine though with a Blustering Wind. So Eliz.
Weeden the Midwife brought the Infant to the Third Church when Sermon was about
half done in the Afternoon."

Poor little Stephen and Hull and Joseph, shrinking
away from the icy water, but too benumbed to cry! Small wonder that they
quickly yielded up their souls after the short struggle for life so gloomily
and so coldly begun. Of Judge Sewall's fourteen children but three survived
him, a majority dying in infancy; and of fifteen children of his friend Cotton
Mather but two survived their father.

This religious ordeal was but the initial step in the
rigid system of selection enforced by every detail of the manner of life in
early New England. The mortality among infants was appallingly large; and the
natural result — the survival of the fittest — may account for the present
tough endurance of the New England people.

Nor was the christening day the only Lord's Day when
the baby graced the meeting-house. Puritan mothers were all church lovers and
strict churchgoers, and all the members of the household were equally
church-attending; and if the mother went to meeting the baby had to go also. I
have heard of a little wooden cage or frame in the meeting-house to hold
Puritan babies who were too young, or feeble, or sleepy to sit upright.

Of the dress of these Puritan infants we know but
little. Linen formed the chilling substructure of their attire — little, thin,
linen, short-sleeved, low-necked shirts. Some of them have been preserved, and
with their tiny rows of hemstitching and drawn work and the narrow edges of
thread-lace are pretty and dainty even at the present day. At the rooms of the
Essex Institute in Salem may be seen the shirt and mittens of Governor
Bradford's infancy. The ends of the stiff, little, linen mittens have evidently
been worn off by the active friction of baby fingers and then been replaced by
patches of red and white cheney or calico. The gowns are generally rather
shapeless, large-necked sacks of linen or dimity, made and embroidered, of
course, entirely by hand, and drawn into shape by narrow, cotton ferret or
linen bobbin. In summer and winter the baby's head was always closely covered
with a cap, or "biggin" often warmly wadded, which was more
comforting in winter than comfortable in summer.

The seventeenth century baby slept, as does his
nineteenth century descendant, in a cradle, frequently made of heavy panelled
or carved wood, and always deeply hooded to protect him from the constant
drafts. Twins had cradles with hoods at both ends. Judge Sewall paid sixteen
shillings for a wicker cradle for one of his many children. The baby was
carried upstairs, when first moved, with silver and gold in his hand to bring
him wealth and cause him always to rise in the world, just as babies are
carried upstairs by superstitious nurses nowadays, and he had "scarlet
laid on his head to keep him from harm." He was dosed with various
nostrums that held full sway in the nursery even until Federal days,
"Daffy's Elixir" being perhaps the most widely known, and hence the
most widely harmful. It was valuable enough (in one sense of the word) to be
sharply fought over in old England in Queen Anne's time, and to have its
disputed ownership the cause of many lawsuits. Advertisements of it frequently
appear in the Boston News Letter and other New England newspapers of
early date.

The most common and largely dosed diseases of early
infancy were, I judge from contemporary records, to use the plain terms of the
times, worms, rickets, and fits. Curiously enough, Sir Thomas Browne, in the
latter part of the eighteenth century, wrote of the rickets as a new disease,
scarce so old as to afford good observation, and wondered whether it existed in
the American plantations. In old medical books which were used by the New
England colonists I find manifold receipts for the cure of these infantile
diseases. Snails form the basis, or rather the chief ingredient, of many of
these medicines. Indeed, I should fancy that snails must have been almost
exterminated in the near vicinity of towns, so largely were they sought for and
employed medicinally. There are several receipts for making snail-water, or
snail-pottage; here is one of the most pleasing ones:

"The admirable and most famous Snail water. —
Take a peck of garden Shel Snails, wash them well in Small Beer, and put them
in an oven till they have done making a Noise, then take them out and wipe them
well from the green froth that is upon them, and bruise them shels and all in a
Stone Mortar, then take a Quart of Earthworms, scowre them with salt, slit
them, and wash well with water from their filth, and in a stone Mortar beat
them in pieces, then lay in the bottom of your distilled pot Angelica two
handfuls, and two handfuls of Celandine upon them, to which put two quarts of
Rosemary flowers, Bearafoot, Agrimony, red Dock roots, Bark of Barberries,
Betony wood Sorrel of each two handfuls, Rue one handful; then lay the Snails
and Worms on top of the hearbs and flowers, then pour on three Gallons of the
Strongest Ale, and let it stand all night, in the morning put in three ounces
of Cloves beaten, sixpennyworth of beaten Saffron, and on the top of them six
ounces of shaved Hartshorne, then set on the Limbeck, and close it with paste
and so receive the water by pintes, which will be nine in all, the first is the
strongest, whereof take in the morning two spoonfuls in four spoonfuls of small
Beer, the like in the Afternoon."

Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured.
Snails also were used externally:

"To anoint the Ricketed Childs Limbs and to
recover it in a short time, though the child be so lame as to go upon crutches:

"Take a peck of Garden Snailes and bruse them,
put them into a course Canvass bagg, and hang it up, and set a dish under to
receive the liquor that droppeth from them, wherewith anoint the Childe in
every Joynt which you perceive to be weak before the fire every morning and
evening. This I have known make a Patient Childe that was extream weak to go
alone using it only a week time."

There were also "unguents to anoynt the
Ricketted Childs breast," and various drinks to be given "to the
patient childe fasting," as they termed him in what appears to us a
half-comic, though wholly truthful appellation.

For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of
senna and rhubarb and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and
as for "Collick" and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every
respectable Puritan patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and
nauseous compounds that were offered to him for his relief.

Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments,
"anodyne necklaces." I find them advertised in the Boston Evening
Post as late as 1771 — "Anodine Necklaces for the Easy breeding of
Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays children wear strings of amber beads to
avert croup.

Another medicine "to make childrens teeth come
without Paine" was this: "Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or
two or roahed; and with the braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and
therewith anoynt the Childes gums as often as you please." Still further
advice was to scratch the child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's
teeth or wolf's fangs around his neck — an ugly necklace.

The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby
opened his sad eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and
"laid on a pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen
or serge were hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of
cheney or calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses,
and all the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the
household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden to a
dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "Les Caquets de l'Accouchée,"
the popular book of the time of Louis XIII., proves.

Doubtless at this New England amphidromia the
"groaning beer" was drunk, though Sewall "brewed my Wives Groaning
Beer" two months before the child was born. By tradition, "groaning
cake," to be used at the time of the birth of the child, and given to
visitors for a week or two later, also was made; but I find no allusion to it
under that name in any of the diaries of the times. At this women's dinner good
substantial viands were served. "Women din'd with rost Beef and minc'd
Pyes, good Cheese and Tarts." When another Sewall baby was scarcely two
weeks old, seventeen women were dined at Judge Sewall's on equally solid meats,
"Boil'd Pork, Beef, Fowls, very good Rost Beef, Turkey, Pye and
Tarts." Madam Downing gave her women "plenty of sack and
claret." A survival of this custom existed for many years in the fashion
of drinking Caudle at the bedside of the mother.

As might be expected of a man who diverted himself in
attending the dissection of an Indian, which gruesome gayety exhilarated him
into spending a tidy sum — for him—on drinks and feeing "the
maid;" and in visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on
a pleasure trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent
his entire day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms; — in
the house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the entertainment
or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led solemnly to the house of
some old, influential, or pious person, who formally gave them his blessing. He
took them also to some of the funerals of the endless procession of dead
Bostonians that files sombrely through the pages of his diary, to the funeral
of their baby brother, little Stephen Sewall, when "Sam and his sisters
(who were about five and six years old) cryed much coming home and at home, so
that I could hardly quiet them. It seems they looked into Tomb, and Sam said he
saw a great Coffin there, his Grandfathers." These were not the only tears
that Sam and Betty and Hannah shed through fear of death. When Betty was a year
older her father wrote:

"It falls to my daughter Elizabeths Share to
read the 24 of Isaiah which she doth with many Tears not being very well, and
the Contents of the Chapter and Sympathy with her draw Tears from me
also."

Two days later, Sam, who was then about ten years
old, also showed evidence of the dejection of soul around him.

"Richard Dumer, a flourishing youth of 9 years
old dies of the Small Pocks. I tell Sam of it and what need be had to prepare
for Death, and therefore to endeavor really to pray, when he said over the
Lord's Prayer: He seemed not much to mind, eating an Aple; but when he came to
say Our Father he burst out into a bitter Cry and said he was afraid he should
die. I pray'd with him and read Scriptures comforting against Death, as O death
where is thy sting, &c. All things yours. Life and Immortality brought to
light by Christ."

In January, 1695, Judge Sewall writes:

"When I came in, past 7 at night, my wife met me
in the Entry and told me Betty had surprised them. I was surprised with the
Abruptness of the Relation. It seems Betty Sewall had given some signs of
dejection and sorrow; but a little while after dinner she burst out into an
amazing cry, which caus'd all the family to cry too; Her Mother ask'd the
reason, she gave none; at last said she was afraid she should goe to Hell, her
Sins were not pardon'd. She was first wounded by my reading a sermon of Mr.
Norton's, Text, Ye shall seek me and shall not find me. And those words in the
sermon, Ye shall seek me and die in your Sins ran in her mind and terrified her
greatly. And staying at home she read out of Mr. Cotton Mather — Why hath Satan
filled thy Heart, which increased her Fear. Her Mother asked her whether she
pray'd. She answered yes but fear'd her prayers were not heard because her sins
were not pardon'd."

A fortnight later he writes:

"Betty comes into me as soon as I was up and
tells me the disquiet she had when wak'd; told me she was afraid she should go
to Hell, was like Spira, not Elected. Ask'd her what I should pray for, she
said that God would pardon her Sin and give her a new heart. I answer'd her
Fears as well as I could and pray'd with many Tears on either part. Hope God
heard us."

Three months later still he makes this entry:

"Betty can hardly read her chapter for weeping,
tells me she is afraid she is gon back, does not taste that sweetness in
reading the Word which once she did; fears that what was once upon her is worn
off. I said what I could to her and in the evening pray'd with her alone."

Poor little "wounded" Betty!She did not die in childhood as she feared,
but lived to pass through many gloomy hours of morbid introspection and of
overwhelming fear of death, to marry and become the mother of eight children;
but was always buffeted with fears and tormented with doubts, which she
despairingly communicated to her solemn and far from comforting father; and at
last she faced the dread foe Death at the age of thirty-five. Judge Sewall
wrote sadly the day of her funeral: "I hope God has delivered her now from
all her fears;" every one reading of her bewildered and depressed spiritual
life must sincerely hope so with him. In truth, the Puritan children were, as
Judge Sewall said, "stirred up dreadfully to seek God."

Here is the way that one of Sewall's neighbors taught
his little daughter when she was four years old:

"I took my little daughter Katy into my Study
and there I told my child That I am to Dy Shortly and Shee must, when I am
Dead, Remember every Thing, that I now said unto her, I sett before her the
sinful condition of her Nature and I charged her to pray in secret places every
day. That God for the sake of Jesus Christ would give her a New Heart. I gave
her to understand that when I am taken from her she must look to meet with more
Humbling Afflictions than she does now she has a Tender Father to provide for
her." I hardly understand why Cotton Mather, who was really very gentle to
his children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little
blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and, indeed,
survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two years and seven
months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and praise. His pious and
incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly satisfactory in their
results, especially as shown in the career of his son Increase, or
"Cressy."

No age appeared to be too young for these remarkable
exhibitions of religious feeling. Phebe Bartlett was barely four years old when
she passed through her amazing ordeal of conversion, a painful example of
religious precocity. The "pious and ingenious Jane Turell" could
relate many stories out of the Scriptures before she was two years old, and was
set upon a table "to show off," in quite the modern fashion.
"Before she was four years old she could say the greater part of the
Assembly's Catechism, many of the Psalms, read distinctly, and make pertinent
remarks on many things she read. She asked many astonishing questions about
divine mysteries." It is a truly comic anticlimax in her father's stilted
letters to her to have him end his pious instructions with this advice:
"And as you love me do not eat green apples."

Of the demeanor of children to their parents naught
can be said but praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record
shows that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were
well for them thus obey the law of God, for by the law of the land high-handed
disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not find this penalty
ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim Calvin, a fact which redounds
to the credit both of justice and youth in colonial days.

It was not strange that Judge Sewall, always finding
in natural events and appearances symbols of spiritual and religious
signification, should find in his children painful types of original sin.

"Nov. 6, 1692. — Joseph threw a knop of Brass
and hit his Sister Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed; and upon
which, and for his playing at Prayer-time and eating when Return Thanks, I
whip'd him pretty smartly. When I first went in (call'd by his Grandmother) he
sought to shadow and hide himself from me behind the bead of the Cradle; which
gave me the sorrowful remembrance of Adam's carriage."

It was natural, too, that Judge Sewall's children
should be timid; they ran in terror to their father's chamber at the approach
of a thunderstorm; and, living in mysterious witchcraft days, they fled
screaming through the hall, and their mother with them, at the sudden entrance
of a neighbor with a rug over her head.

All youthful Puritans were not as godly as the young
Sewalls. Nathaniel Mather wrote thus in his diary:

"When very young I went astray from God and my
mind was altogether taken with vanities and follies: such as the remembrance of
them doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which then I
was guilty of, none so sticks upon me as that, being very young, I was whitling
on the Sabbath-day; and for fear of being seen, I did it behind the door.
A great reproach of God! a specimen of that atheism I brought
into the world with me!"

It is satisfactory to add that this young prig of a
Mather died when nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's
"Narratives of Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of
the Puritanical religious teaching of the young can be found than the account
given in the Magnalia of various young souls in whom the love of God was
remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather. His
diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in detail his
covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and directions in his various
religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a day, and "did not slubber
over his prayers with hasty amputations, but wrestled in them for a good part
of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He fasted. He made long lists of
sins, long catalogues of things forbidden, "and then fell a-stoning
them." He "chewed mach on excellent sermons." He not only read
the Bible, but "obliged himself to the vigor of nature being consumed in
ye very budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all sorrowes
most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children, by these occasions,
and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye countrie, and ye manifold
temptations of the place, were drawn away by evill examples into extravagante
and dangerous courses, getting ye raines off their neks and departing from
their parents. Some became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea,
and other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of their
soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of God. So that they
saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted."

Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his
children, his power waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking
grandchildren, and they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid
Betty, lived with his grandfather for a time, and on April 1st, 1719, the Judge
wrote:

"In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and
Grindall Rawson from playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They
were the greatest fools that did so. N. E. Men came hither to avoid anniversary
days, the keeping of them such as the 25th of Decr. How displeasing must it be
to God the give of our Time to keep anniversary days to play the fool with
ourselves and others."

Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston
schoolmaster, begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and
Provoking nature of such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April
first.

Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and
more serious matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote:

"Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and
took Ben Swett with him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before
anybody was up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much
displeased."

Two days later he writes thus peremptorily of his
grandson:

"Did the like again, but took not Ben with him.
I told him he could not lodge here practicing thus. So he log'd elsewhere."

Though Boston boys played "wicket" on
Boston Common, I fancy the young Puritans had, as a rule, few games, and were
allowed few amusements. They apparently brought over some English pastimes with
them, for in 1657 it was found necessary to pass this law in Boston:

"Forasmuch as sundry complaints are made that
several persons have received hurt by boys and young men playing at football in
the streets, these therefore are to enjoin that none be found at that game in
any of the streets, lanes or enclosures of this town under the penalty of
twenty shillings for every such offence."

One needless piece of cruelty which was exercised
toward boys by Puritan lawgivers is shown by one of the enjoined duties of the
tithingman. He was ordered to keep all boys from swimming in the water. I do
not doubt that the boys swam, since each tithingman had ten families under his
charge; but of course they could not swim as often nor as long as they wished.
From the brother sport of winter skating, they were not debarred; and they went
on thin ice, and fell through and were drowned, just as country boys are
nowadays. Judge Sewall wrote on November 30th, 1696:

"Many scholars go in the afternoon to Scate on
Fresh Pond. Wm. Maxwell and John Eyre fall in, are drowned."

In the New England Weekly Journal of January
15th, 1728, we read:

On Monday last Two Young Persons who were Brothers,
viz Mr. George and Nathan Howell diverting themselves by Skating at the bottom
of the Common, the Ice breaking under them they were both drowned;" and in
the same journal of two weeks later date we find record of another death by
drowning.

"A young man, viz, Mr. Comfort Poster, skating
on the ice from Squantum Point to Dorchester, fell into the Water & was
drown'd. He was about 16 or 18 years of age."

Advertisements of "Mens and Boys Scates"
appear in the Boston Gazette, of 1749, and the Boston Evening Post,
of 1758. The February News Letter of 1769, has a notice of the sale of
"Best Holland Scates of Different Sizes."

In the list of goods on board a prize taken by a
privateersman in 1712 were "Boxes of Toys." Higginson, writing to his
brother in 1695, told him that "toys would sell if in small
quantity." In exceeding small quantity one would fancy. In 1743 the Boston
News Letter advertised "English and Dutch Toys for Children." Not
until October, 1771, on the lists of the Boston shop-keepers, who seemed to
advertise and to sell every known article of dry goods, hardware, house
furnishing, ornament, dress and food, came that single but pleasure-filled item
"Boys Marbles." "Battledores and Shuttles" appeared in
1761. I know that no little maids could ever have lived without dolls, not even
the serious-minded daughters of the Pilgrims; but the only dolls that were
advertised in colonial newspapers were the "London drest babys" of
milliners and mantua-makers, that were sent over to serve as fashion plates for
modish New England dames. A few century-old dolls still survive Revolutionary
times, wooden-faced monstrosities, shapeless and mean, but doubtless
well-beloved and cherished in the days of their youth.

As years rolled by and eighteenth century frivolity
and worldliness took the place of Puritan sobriety and religion, New England
children shared with their elders in that growing love of amusement, which
found but few and inadequate methods of expression in the lives of either old
or young. In the year 1771 there was sent from Nova Scotia a young miss of New
England parentage — Anna Green Winslow — to live with her aunt and receive a
"finishing" in Boston schools. For the edification of her parents and
her own practice in penmanship, this bright little maid kept a diary, of which
portions have been preserved, and which I do not hesitate to say is the most
sprightly record of the daily life of a girl of her age that I have ever read.
There is not a dull word in it, and every page has some statement of historical
value. She was twelve years old shortly after the diary was begun, and she then
had a "coming-out party" — she became a "miss in her
teens." To this rout only young ladies of her own age and in the most
elegant Boston society were invited — no rough Boston boys. Miss Anna has
written for us more than one prim and quaint little picture of similar parties
— here is one of her clear and stiff little descriptions; and a graphic account
also of the evening dress of a young girl at that time.

"I, have now the pleasure to give you the result
Viz; a very genteel well regulated assembly which we had at Mr. Soleys last
evening, Miss Soley being mistress of the ceremony. Miss Soley desired me to
assist Miss Hannah in making out a list of guests which I did. Sometime since I
wrote all the invitation cards. There was a large company assembled in a large
handsome upper room in the new end of the house. We had two fiddles and I had
the honor to open the diversion of the evening in a minuet with Miss Soley.
Here follows a list of the company as we form'd for country-dancing. Miss Soley
and Miss Anna Green Winslow; Miss Calif and Miss Scott; Miss Williams and Miss McLarth;
Miss Codman and Miss Winslow; Miss Ives and Miss Coffin; Miss Scollay and Miss
Bella Coffin; Miss Waldo and Miss Quinsey; Miss Glover and Miss Draper; Miss
Hubbard and Miss Cregur (usually pronounced Kicker) and two Miss Sheafs were
invited but were sick or sorry and beg'd to be excused.

"There was a little Miss Russel and little ones
of the family present who could not dance. As spectators there were Mr. &
Mrs. Deming, Mr. & Mrs. Sweetser, Mr. and Mrs. Soley, Mr. & Mrs.
Claney, Mrs. Draper, Miss Orice, Miss Hannah — our treat was nuts, raisins,
cakes, Wine, punch hot and cold all in great plenty. We had a very agreeable
evening from 5 to 10 o'clock. For variety we woo'd a widow, hunted the whistle,
threaded the needle, & while the company was collecting we diverted
ourselves with playing of pawns— no
rudeness Mamma I assure you. Aunt Deming desires you would particularly observe
that the elderly part of the Company were Spectators only, that they
mixed not in either of the above-described scenes.

How clear the picture: can you not see it — the low
raftered chamber softly alight with candles on mantel-tree and in sconces; the
two fiddles soberly squeaking: the rows of demure little Boston maids, all of
New England Brahmin blood, in high rolls, with nodding plumes and sparkling
combs, with ruffles and mitts, little miniatures of their elegant mammas,
soberly walking and curtseying through the stately minuet "with no
rudeness I can assure you;" and discreetly partaking of hot and cold punch
afterward.

There came at this time to another lady in this
Boston court circle a grandchild eight years of age, from the Barbadoes, to
also attend Boston schools. Missy left her grandmother's house in high dudgeon
because she could not have wine at all her meals. And her parents upheld her,
saying she had been brought up a lady and must have wine when she wished it.
Evidently Cobbett's statement of the free drinking of wine, cider, and beer by
American children was true — as Anna Green Winslow's "treat"would also show.

Though Puritan children had few recreations and
amusements, they must have enjoyed a very cheerful, happy home life. Large
families abounded. Cotton Mather says:

"One woman had not less than twenty-two
children, and another had no less than twenty-three children by one husband
whereof nineteen lived to mans estate, and a third who was mother to seven and
twenty children."

Sir William Phips was one of twenty-six children, all
with the same mother. Printer Green had thirty children. The Rev. John Sherman,
of Watertown, had twenty-six children by two wives — twenty by his last wife.
The Rev. Samuel Willard, first minister to Groton, had twenty children, and his
father had seventeen children. Benjamin Franklin was one of a family of
seventeen. Charles Francis Adams has told us of the fruitful vines of old
Braintree.

The little Puritans rejoiced in some very singular
names, the offspring of Roger Clap being good examples: Experience, Waitstill,
Preserved, Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite, and Supply.

Of the food given Puritan children we know but
little. In an old almanac of the eighteenth century I find a few sentences of
advice as to the "Easy Rearing of Children." The writer urges that
boys as soon as they can run alone go without hats to harden them, and if
possible sleep without nightcaps, as soon as they have any hair. He advises
always to wet children's feet in cold water and thus make them (the feet)
tough, and also to have children wear thin-soled shoes "that the wet may
come freely in." He says young children should never be allowed to drink
cold drinks, but should always have their beer a little heated; that it is "best
to feed them on Milk, Pottage, Flummery, Bread, and Cheese, and not let them
drink their beer till they have first eaten a piece of Brown Bread." Fancy
a young child nowadays making a meal of brown bread and cheese with warm beer!
He suggests that they drink but little wine or liquor, and sleep on quilts
instead of feathers. In such ways were reared our Revolutionary heroes.

Of the dazzling and beautiful array in our modern
confectioners' shops little Priscilla and Hate-Evil could never have dreamed,
even in visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica
Candy, Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats
came to port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds,"
"Glaz'd Almonds," and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter
adamantine, crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a
colonial cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and
daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial days
Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though dearly loved
bySalem lads and lasses, always bore —
indeed, do still bear — too strong a flavor of liquorice, too haunting a
medicinal suggestion to be loved by other children of the Puritans. As an
instance, on a large scale, of the retributive fate that always pursues the
candy-eating wight, I state that the good ship Ann and Hope brought into
Providence one hundred years ago, as part of her cargo, eight boxes of
sweetmeats and twenty tubs of sugar candy, and on the succeeding voyage sternly
fetched no sweets, but brought instead forty-eight boxes of rhubarb.

The children doubtless had prunes, figs,
"courance," and I know they had "Raisins of the Sun" and
"Bloom Raisins" galore. Advertisements of all these fruits appear in
the earliest newspapers. Though "China Oranges" were frequently given
to and by Judge Sewall, I have not found them advertised for sale till
Revolutionary times, and I fancy few children had then tasted them. The native
and domestic fruits were plentiful, but many of them were poor. The apples and
pears and Kentish cherries were better than the peaches and grapes. The
children gathered the summer berries in season, and the autumn's plentiful and
spicy store of boxberries, checkerberries, teaberries or gingerbread berries
with October's brown nuts. There were gingerbread and "cacks" even in
the earliest days; but they were not sold in unlimited numbers. The omnipotent
hand of Puritan law laid its firm hold on their manufacture. Judge Sewall often
speaks, however, of Banbury cakes and Meers cakes; Meer was a celebrated Boston
baker and confectioner. The colonists had also egg cakes and marchepanes and
maccaroons.

There were children's books in those early days; not
numerous, however, nor varied was the assortment from which Puritan youth in
New England could choose. Here is the advertisement of one:

"Small book in easey verse Very Suitable for
children, entitled The Prodigal Daughter or the Disobedient Lady Reclaimed:
adorned with curious cuts, Price Sixpence."

Somehow, from the suggestion of the title we should
hardly fancy this to be an edifying book for children. John Cotton supplied
them with "Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England: Drawn out of
the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls Nourishment. But may be of like
Use to Any Children."

Another book was published in many editions and sold
in large numbers, and much extolled by contemporary ministers. It was entitled:

"A Token for Children. Being the exact account
of the Conversion & Holy & Exemplary Lives of several Young Children by
James Janeway."

To it was added by Cotton Mather:

"Some examples of Children in whom the fear of
God was remarkably Budding before they died; in several parts of New
England."

Cotton Mather also wrote: "Good Lessons for
Children, in Verse." Other books were, "A Looking Glasse for
Children," "The life of Elizabeth Butcher, the Early Piety
series;" "The life of Mary Paddock, who died at the age of
nine;" "The Childs new Plaything" (which was a primer); "Divine
Songs in Easy Language;" and "Praise out of the Mouth of Babes;"
"A Particular Account of some Extraordinary Pious Motions and devout
Exercises observed of late in many Children in Siberia." Also accounts of
pious motions of children in Silesia and of Jewish children in Berlin. One
oasis appeared in the desert waste — after the first quarter of the eighteenth
century Puritan children had Mother Goose.

By 1787, in Isaiah Thomas' list of "books
Suitable for Children of all ages," we find less serious books.

"Tom Jones Abridged," "Peregrine
Pickle Abridged," "Vice in its Proper Shape," "The Sugar
Plumb," "Bag of Nuts Ready Crack'd," "Jacky Dandy,"
"History of Billy and Polly Friendly." Among the "Chapman's
Books for the Edification and Amusement of young Men and Women who are not able
to Purchase those of a Higher Price" are, "The Amours and Adventures
of Two English Gentlemen in Italy," "Fifteen Comforts of
Matrimony," "The Lovers Secretary," and "Laugh and be Fat."
Another advertisement of about the same date contained, among the books for
misses, "The Masqued Wedding," "The Elopement," "The
Passionate Lovers," "Sketches of the History and Importance of the
Fair Sex," "Original Love Letters," and "Six Dialogues of
Young Misses Relating to Matrimony;" thus showing that love-stories were
not abhorred by the descendants of the Puritans.

In such an exceptional plantation as New England, a
colony peopled not by the commonplace and average Englishmen of the day, but by
men of special intelligence, and almost universally of good education, it was
inevitable that early and profound attention should be paid to the
establishment of schools. Cotton Mather said in 1685, in his sermon before the
Governor and his Council; "the Youth in this country are verie Sharp and
early Ripe in their Capacities." So quickly had New England air developed
the typical New England traits. And the early schoolmasters, too, may be
thanked for their scholars' early ripeness and sharpness.

At an early age both girls and boys were sent to dame-schools,
where, if girls were not taught much book-learning, they were carefully
instructed in all housewifely arts. They learned to cook; and to spin and weave
and knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children could
spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers. Fine knitting
was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the knitter, and many
curious and elaborate stitches were known; the herring-bone and the
fox-and-geese-patterns being prime favorites. Initials were knit into mittens
and stockings; one clever young miss of Shelburne, N. H., could knit the
alphabet and a verse of poetry into a single pair of mittens. Fine embroidery
was to New England women and girls a delight. The Indians at an early day called
the English women "lazie Squaes" when they saw the latter
embroidering coifs instead of digging in the fields. Mr. Brownell, the Boston
schoolmaster in 1716, taught "Young Gentle Women and Children all sorts of
Fine Works as Feather works, Filigree, and Painting on Glass, Embroidering a
new Way, Turkey-work for Handkerchiefs two new Ways, fine new Fashion purses,
flourishing and plain Work." We find a Newport dame teaching "Sewing,
Marking, Queen Stitch and Knitting," and a Boston shopkeeper taking children
and young ladies to board and be taught "Dresden and Embroidery on gauze,
Tent Stitch and all sorts of Colour'd Work." Crewels, embroidery, silks,
and chenilles appear frequently in early newspapers. Many of the fruits of
these careful lessons of colonial childhood remain to us quaint samplers, bed
hangings, petticoats and pockets, and frail lace veils and scarfs. Miss Susan
Hayes Ward has resuscitated from these old embroideries a curious stitch used
to great effect on many of them, and employed also on ancient Persian
embroideries, and she points out that the designs are Persian also. This stitch
was not known in the modern English needlework schools; but just as good old
Elizabethan words and phrases are still used in New England, though obsolete in
England, so this curious old stitch has lived in the colony when lost in the
mother country; or, it may be possible, since it is found so frequently in the
vicinity of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims obtained both stitch and designs in
Holland, whose greater commerce with the Orient may have supplied to deft
English fingers the Persian pattern.

Other accomplishments were taught to girls;
"cutting of Escutcheons" and paper flowers — "Papyrotamia"
it was ambitiously called — and painting on velvet; and quilt-piecing in a
hundred different and difficult designs. They also learned to make bone Iace
with pillow and bobbins.

The boys were thrust at once into that iron-handed
but wholly wise grasp — the Latin Grammar. The minds trained in earliest youth
in that study, as it was then taught, have made their deep and noble impress on
this nation. The study of mathematics was, until well into this century, a
hopeless maze to many youthful minds. Doubtless the Puritans learned
multiplication tables and may have found them, as didMarjorie Fleming, "a horrible and wretched plaege,"
though no pious little New Englanders would have dared to say as she did,
"You cant conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7,
it is what nature itself can't endure."

Great attention was paid to penmanship. Spelling was
nought if the "wrighting" were only fair and flowing. I have never
read any criticism of teachers by either parents or town officerssave on the one question of writing. How
deeply children were versed or grounded in the knowledge of the proper use of
"Simme colings nots of interiogations peorids and commoes," I do not
know. A boundless freedom apparently was given, as was also in orthography—if
we judge from the letters of the times, where "horrid false spells,"
as Cotton Mather called them, abound.

It is natural to dwell on the religious teaching of
Puritan children, because so much of their education had a religious element in
it. They must have felt, like Tony Lumpkin, "tired of having good dinged
into 'em." Their primers taught religious rhymes; they read from the
Bible, the Catechism, the Psalm Book, and that lurid rhymed horror "The
Day of Doom;" they parsed, too, from these universal books. How did they
parse these lines from the Bay Psalm Book?

"And sayd He would not them waste; had not

Moses stood (whom he chose)

'fore him th' breach; to turn his wrath

lest that he should waste those."

Their "horn books" —

"books of stature awe

Which with pellucid horn secured are

To save from fingers wet the letters fair,"

those framed and behandled sheets of semitransparent horn, which were
worn hanging at the side and were studied, as late certainly as the year 1715
by children of the Pilgrims, also managed to instil with the alphabet some
religious words or principles. Usually the Lord's Prayer formed part of the
printed text. Though horn-books are referred to in Sewall's diary and in the
letters of Wait Still Winthrop, and appear on stationers' and booksellers'
lists at the beginning of the eighteenth century, I do not know of the
preservation of a single specimen to our own day.

The schoolhouses were simple dwellings, often
tumbling down and out of repair. The Roxbury teacher wrote in 1681:

"Of inconveniences [in the schoolhouse] I shall
mention no other but the confused and shattered and nastie posture that it is
in, not fitting for to reside in, the glass broke, and thereupon very raw and
cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle fires, the hearth
spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of kilter, that one bad well-nigh
as goods keep school in a hog stie as in it."

This schoolhouse had been built and furnished with
some care in 1652, as this entry in the town records shows:

"The feoffes agreed with Daniel Welde that he
provide convenient benches with forms, with tables for the scholars, and a
conveniente seate for the scholmaster, a Deske to put the Dictionary on and
shelves to lay up bookes."

The schoolmaster "promised and engaged to use
his best endeavour both by precept and example to instruct in all Scholasticall
morall and Theologicall discipline the children so far as they be capable, all
A. B. C. Darians excepted." He was paid in corn, barley or peas, the value
of £25 per annum, and each child, through his parents or guardians, supplied
half a cord of wood for the schoolhouse fire. If this load of wood were not
promptly furnished the child suffered, for the master did not allow him the
benefit of the fire; that is, to go near enough the fireplace to feel the
warmth.

The children of wise parents like Cotton Mather, were
also taught "opificial and beneficial sciences," such as the mystery
of medicine — a mystery indeed in colonial times.

Puritan schoolmasters believed, as did Puritan
parents, that sparing the rod spoiled the child, and great latitude was given
in punishment; the rod and ferule were fiercely and frequently plied "with
lamming and with whipping, and such benefits of nature" as in English
schools of the same date. When young men were publicly whipped in colleges,
children were sure brutal instrument can well be imagined. At another school,
whipping of unlucky wights was done "upon a peaked block with a tattling
stick;" and this expression of colonial severity seems to take on
additional force and cruelty in our minds that we do not at all know what a
tattling stick was, nor understand what was meant by a peaked block.

I often fancy I should have enjoyed living in the
good old times, but I am glad I never was a child in colonial New England — to
have been baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had
to learn the Assembly's Catechism and "explain all the Quaestions with
conferring Texts," to have been constantly threatened with fear of death
and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's "Day of
Doom" to memory, and, after all, to have been whipped with a tattling
stick.